LOCAL DISH

On a drizzly afternoon in December, Amber Stott is slicing radishes in the basement kitchen of Capitol Heights Academy. Surrounding the table, volunteers grate carrots or cut up cabbage and swap stories.

Stott is wearing a green shirt that cheekily orders "Raise Kale!" as sleeves smattered with strawberries poke out from under the shirt. That she has decked herself in fruit- and vegetable-inspired attire is no mistake—the mission statement of her nonprofit, Food Literacy Center, simply states "Our mission is to get kids to eat their vegetables."

In Stott's backyard a pineapple guava bush blooms next to navel orange, Valencia orange, lime and Meyer lemon trees. Five bushes of blueberries cozy up to finger limes, epazote and spineless nopal cactus. A Pink Lady apple tree thrives next to a Fuyu persimmon tree and an Asian pear tree.

In the right season, her garden beds are full of nine kinds of peppers, and tomatoes dangle from their vines. She has created her own personal food system that deeply connects with her passion for food literacy.

Woody Tasch has been working with food and finance for decades. As an economist in the late 1970s he worked on a project at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in El Batan, Mexico, home of the initiatives that increased global food production, somewhat inaptly referred to as the "Green Revolution." He then spent the 1980s in the venture capital world in New York City.

"Here I am 30 years later on the exact opposite end of a big arc of understanding," says Tasch. He views his work today as antithetical to both venture capital and "the big, industrial, technologically driven, monocultural approach to food production" accelerated by the Green Revolution.

They say this as if to say eat your vegetables. But what if I bake cakes, and eat them—what does that make me?

Sometimes they are ridiculous, huge and sugared and over-the-top. I call them grand. Sometimes they are coarse, bitter-edged, and not fit for company. I call them humble. What if I want to be like that? Humble. And grand. At times decorated and dressed up, layered and complex, and other times not layered but laid bare, tender and easily broken. They are all of them all-natural. They have integrity, and poise. Could be I am taking this too far, this cake. Or could be this unhealthy habit is the health of healing a perspective: Wonder and whimsy are essential to wellness.

When I was living in France, I first discovered leeks when my neighbor took me to her garden to pull several handfuls. They were still young, she explained, and she would make them into a salad. She instructed me to skip every two or three, then pull one. That meant that the leeks left in the ground had plenty of room to thicken and mature, yet she could benefit immediately from the young ones.

"We planted that way on purpose. That is why the leeks are so close together. It is like your thinning, but we use what we thin." How clever, I thought—but then the French are like that, getting the most out of everything.

This is not the secular mundane, when beauty is wholesome oat groat grey. This is when we do the things that won't do for daily: gild the lily, paint a face, bake crazy cakes with three bottles of booze, and ice them, and stack them and eat, plan hoopla and jubilee, carousal and revelry, all in the name of religion or rest or something more ludicrous, like love.

Even ascetics observe feast days. They obey that rhythm where work comes to work and rest comes to rest and if we do the same our bodies so relax our souls well up and spring out in celebration. It could be simple: set our hoes down in the dirt and dance. It could be grand: nod our heads in the blackened direction of something greater than our own two hands. Some call it the collective.

Whatever you name it, feast is prayer shaped like a candied kumquat, look how bright it is. Look, how beautiful. But it is hold in the palm small, sweet like only bitter rind and sour juice can be, balanced, hopefully, smelling of citrus, sugar-soaked and boiled so long. Even ascetics observe feast days, sometimes with food, but they know best, feast is more than eating. It is moments set apart like sacred trays lifting quotidian times up. Some celebrations involve an extra reading, a special color, a public kiss. And those ascetics, and we the profane lovers of this blessed world, and our feasts, some even allow for halleluiah.

Amanda Hawkins writes about food, place spirit and the connections between the three. She posts often on Enchanted Fig, a food site with stories and recipes that pendulum swing from highbrow cakes to humble feral offerings.

The Bayeux tapestry is a linen scroll, 20 inches wide and 230 feet long, on which is embroidered an account of the Norman invasion, with wonderful illustrations picked out in colored woolen threads.

In 1066 William the Conqueror sailed from Normandy to England, where he defeated the English in the battle of Hastings, setting himself up to become king of England. This was just one of many ancient cross-channel skirmishes and squabbles over the throne.

What makes it special is that it was recorded in an amazing document. The Bayeux tapestry is a linen scroll, 20 inches wide and 230 feet long, on which is embroidered an account of the invasion, with text in Latin and wonderful illustrations picked out in colored woolen threads. The story is engrossing, and the art is lively and compelling.

A small, aging town nestles up against the levee on the Sacramento River. Inland from the river, grows a garden full of fu gwa, dow gok, hong zou and cee gwa. The bitter melon, long beans, jujubes and luffa are only a few of several edible plants grown there yearly, and every one is a link to the town's rich history.

From each planted seed grows another opportunity to learn about the town's former residents and their culture.

Chawri Bazar is its own India. One step into the market, colors, sounds and smells magnify in intensity. The narrow streets pulse with stories. Every vignette springs from chaos; every movement catches your eye; every person is eager to tell you something.

The food looks and smells seductive: Sweets decorated with flowers, steaming curries, deep-fried delights all tempt you as you pass by.

There is nothing like the holidays to bring out the cook in us. No matter how many seasons have passed, there is still an excitement about entertaining family and friends with food, whether it is buffet style or all sitting around a table.

I can spend days dreaming up menus, making lists, considering different decorations—that's half the fun of it for me.

Here I've put together some favorites from several of my books. For a full meal, there is an appetizer, first course, a main course with a side dish and a dessert. However, any of these could stand alone.

"By definition all food is coming from farms and ending up on our forks. It's crazy that our food system got to the point that we have to create these things to put an emphasis on nutritious food. There's a revolution of just wanting to get back to the land the way it used to be and should be." - CHEF ERIC ALEXANDER CARPE VINO

In the last issue of Edible Sacramento, I began a journey to understand how our community feels about defining our Farm-to-Fork Capital with a set of criteria. When we label a restaurant as "farm-to-fork," how does that restaurant meet certain standards? Or does anyone sourcing products from farms in the region, no matter the size or the quality of the farm product, have a claim to use the farm-to-fork seal?

I started this series of articles by asking regional food thought leaders for their opinions on the matter. For them, what mattered most was increasing education, both of chefs and consumers, to improve the sustainability of local food. (Be sure to read our previous September/October 2014 issue for the whole story.)

For this article, I talked to chefs throughout the region who cook with local, seasonal ingredients. What do they think about having a farm-to-fork standard by which they must operate? Even among chefs, opinions vary. Some think the effort should be bigger, others fear it could become nothing more than a diluted marketing campaign.